A group of boys hang out on Sullivan Street in Brooklyn in the 1930s.
Helaine Olen at The Baffler writes
Poor Stories from Brooks and Douthat: An excerpt:
In the past week, New York Times columnists David Brooks and Ross Douthat have taken on the issues of personal behavior and social norms among people less economically fortunate than themselves. That’s not how they put it, of course. Douthat wants to address “the social crisis among America’s poor and working class,” while Brooks, never one to shy away from a supposedly telling sociological detail, claims to be concerned with the welfare of “high-school-educated America.”
It’s the usual neo-conservative pablum. The social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s led to a devolution in “norms,” as Brooks puts it, wiping away “basic codes and rules.” Douthat views the world of our ancestors as a paradise lost. “In a substantially poorer American past with a much thinner safety net, lower income Americans found a way to cultivate monogamy, fidelity, sobriety and thrift to an extent that they have not in our richer, higher-spending present.”
It’s a lovely story—our long-suffering but morally upright great-grandparents. They didn’t have a penny to spare, but they still found the wherewithal to scrub their children behind the ears. Too bad it’s a pile of steaming horseshit.
One of the things about growing up as girl interested in history is that if you want to read a book with a female protagonist, you end up reading a lot of tales filled not with gold seeking adventurers, but domestic drama and day-to-day life—books like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The book is the bildungsroman of Francie Nolan, a young girl growing up grinding poverty in pre-World War I Williamsburg, at the end of the first Gilded Age. Francie is widely thought by critics to be a stand-in for author Betty Smith—the word “autobiographical” appears in almost all critical considerations of the book.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of those tales that the patina of time allows us to call heartwarming, but is in reality heartbreaking. The world portrayed by Smith is more akin to Dickens than the world imagined by Douthat and Brooks, and certainly not one you’d like to think is based on a true story. It features an alcoholic father and a mother way too overwhelmed by the need to support the house to show much love to her children. A pervert wandering her tenement attempts a sexual assault on the prepubescent Francie, but her mother stops the assault with a gun.
The Nolan family savings account—a tin can nailed into a closet—is constantly being raided. Francie’s Aunt Evy’s husband abandons his family. Another aunt “gets around,” as they used to say. The only reason Francie gets a decent education is that she convinces her parents to fake an address in a better neighborhood. Even still, she’s forced to drop out of school when her father dies and her mother is unable to support her family on her own. [...]
This world receded, not because post-war Americans suddenly acquired morals, but because they achieved prosperity, not to mention a social safety net through such innovations as Social Security. It was an uncomfortable part of our family and national memory, and not something many wanted to remember. So we allowed ourselves to forget.
But as our economy has faltered, as income and wealth inequality have soared, and family and government supports have been dismantled, the supposedly disordered existence of the poor has made a return. The second Gilded Age is imitating the first. None of this history features in the columns of Brooks, Douthat or others like them, however, who all warble on about an imaginary past.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Blair steels himself for 2-front war:
Bush claimed he had nine, or at least eight votes in the UN Security Council. He lied. He said he would force a UN vote to force countries to "show their hand". He lied. As the US and UK come to terms with their massive diplomatic failure, both countries turn to building legitimacy for their invasion.
In the UK, Blair is steeling himself for the resignation of Robin Cook and Clare Short -- an icon of the Labour Party left. And the rebellion amongst Labour Members of Parliament is growing, with more MPs ready to vote against Blair when he introduces his war resolution.
There have been threats that people will lose their jobs,' said Graham Allen, Nottingham MP and a leading figure among those seeking to launch a rebel amendment against the Government. 'They are telling people that the PM needs their loyalty. People are being put in a very difficult position.' Allen, Chris Smith, the former Culture Secretary who led the last rebellion, and Peter Kilfoyle, the former Defence Secretary, will put down an amendment to the Government's position; 200 MPs could rebel. A number of Ministers below Cabinet rank are likely to resign. |
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If Bibi loses, does he automatically get a commenter slot on Fox? Or an op-ed column at the Washington Post?
— @nomoremister
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin brings a great lesson from the medical world; rounds up Israeli election news; shares new & classic clueless conservative stories; more on Wall St. bonuses; MI losers want to change the rules; Jeb's national security e-mail problem, and; he's quoted on "Clinton fatigue." Why Congress isn't covered by FOIA. Cruz scares the crap out of a little girl. A mind-crushing GunFAIL roundup including an extended rant over the WA dad who left his gun out and finally got charged, but appears to have learned nothing. Finally, GOP zombie cognitive dissonance: still insisting Obamacare's a "job killer," as they have with everything else in history.
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